We will never forget the Sehwag of 2004-05 and 2008-10, though. A soft-spoken man with no time or patience for theatrics, he ripped apart pretty much every single notion we had about opening the batting in Test cricket. Others like Graeme Smith were perhaps better across a variety of conditions, but Sehwag, like the floating-butterfly-and-stinging-bee Muhammad Ali, was the entertainer and path-breaker.

For a brief while, in the first decade of the 21st century, India were the best team in the world: the batting greats: Sehwag, Dravid, Laxman and the incomparable SRT, the spin bowlers: Kumble and Harbhajan (but don’t forget the support spin bowlers like Karthik, Pragyan Ojha etc) and the magnificent swing and seam bowling of Zaheer Khan.

….boggles the imagination. This article says there are 780 languages in India. Isn’t it our duty to protect each of these languages and it’s speakers, rather than merely “imposing” mainstream ones on non speakers?

The first game of the postseason, the ALCS Wildcard game is on in Toronto: the noise and excitement are unbelievable. Elsewhere across the globe, the Ranji Trophy is going to start (probably in a sleepy fashion) in several venues all across India.

Also, for nostalgic purposes, when Indore gets to host its first ever test match, here is the scorecard from an old game that was played in Indore, way back in 1955.